Venture capital funds (VCs) that invested in Israeli startups between
1999 and 2001 have lost $5 billion of the $6.5 billion they had
invested, Yoram Tietz of Ernst & Young Israel (Kost, Forer &
Gabbay) said. Israeli VCs, which accounted for 45 percent of the
number, lost about $2.5 billion.

Tietz and his firm, which handled about half of the startups in
Israel, studied data for companies set up between 1999 and 2001.
"We estimate that investors - about half of them Israeli VCs
- lost $5 billion of the $6.5 billion they invested.

"About $2 billion were lost when companies were completely
written off. Another $3 billion are tentative losses at this point
due to depreciation, but since the situation in the industry is
not getting any better, the likelihood of the VCs seeing any of
this money back is very slim," Tietz explained.

Israel Venture Association president and president of Yozma venture
capital, Yigal Erlich, concurs with the estimate that some $2 billion
worth of startups were written off. His indicator is that about
30 percent of the companies in the portfolios of the VCs were written
off.

"The more troubling issue is the $3 billion loss due to depreciation.
I believe these amounts are not totally lost yet, because some of
the startups may still survive. Should a recovery start within a
year, many of the companies that lost some of their value will survive
and generate returns.

"However, the longer it takes, the harder it is for the VCs
to raise more capital to keep the companies going, and without any
government support to encourage Israeli entities to invest in the
industry, it will be very hard to keep these companies going."

While there is no official data about the losses incurred by VCs
in the U.S., the ratio of write-offs is higher and that of depreciation
is similar.

At this point no demand has surfaced to reduce the VCs' management
fees, Tietz says. However, funds that are established in the future
will probably charge 1.5 percent instead of the current 2.75 percent
or so, he said.

Tietz further said he did not expect the scenario of BRM - which
was forced to reduce its capital from $250 million to $150 million
as investors went back on their commitments - to repeat itself.
Limited partners in VCs are not likely to reduce their commitment,
he said.